Dr Chris Brunt - University of Exeter

4th Floor, Physics Building 14:00-15:00

I will describe a joint Met Office / University of Exeter project that aims to acquire low cost, high volume tropospheric water vapour measurements that will complement ground, satellite, and radiosonde observations, for weather forecasting purposes. The method relies on measuring refraction of Mode S / ADS-B navigational broadcasts from commercial aircraft, which is induced by a relatively stable dry atmospheric stratification and a highly variable water vapour distribution. I will describe recent technical progress and discuss the prospects for a network of interferometers acquiring real-time humidity measurements over the whole UK.